I’ve been asked to expand on some brief comments I made a little while ago in a Facebook thread. They pertain to the institutional context of the humanities – including philosophy and especially religious studies – in academia. Since my new job involves supporting an entire university and not only the humanities, I no longer have a professional stake in these debates. But they remain important for me as someone who cares deeply about the subject matter of philosophy and of much religious studies, for the academy remains central to the work done in these fields, for now at least. It may be that in my lifetime “philosopher” and “religionist” do not primarily mean “professor of philosophy” and “professor of religious studies” respectively. I would welcome such a day, but it is not here yet.
The comments I made stem from a newsletter recently published by the AAR on the topic of teaching and learning. The newsletter highlights Martha Reineke, a professor of religion at the University of Northern Iowa. In explaining Reineke’s views, it identifies some questions important to her with the introduction: “At a time when liberal education in public universities is being challenged as governing boards, state legislatures, parents, and students press for majors with narrow vocational application, questions that keep Reineke awake at night include:”. Of the questions listed there after the colon, I’m particularly interested in this one: “When others increasingly ascribe to public higher education as a narrow economic value, how can we demonstrate that knowledge of world religions builds intercultural competence that undergirds successful economic development and supports strong communities?”

My response to this question was as follows:

The rhetorical move of “When others increasingly believe that higher education should be X, how can we convince them that we are a form of X?” is an interesting one to take. When others increasingly believe that higher education should be an ice cream sandwich, how can we demonstrate that we are an ice cream sandwich?

I admit the tone of the response was snarky, but I hope its point comes across. It is true that many increasingly see higher education as a narrow economic value, a credential for the job market. But that doesn’t imply that those who still work in humanities education should view its primary benefit as job training. For as far as I can see, once the humanities surrender that battle, then they have lost the war: once it has become accepted that the value of the humanities is primarily economic, then it is only a matter of time before they are eliminated entirely.

Sure, an undergraduate humanities education teaches skills that are often useful in the job market: writing, research, critical thinking. So too the “intercultural competence” that Reineke mentions. But if these are the reason to get an undergraduate degree, then one is best served with a degree tailored specifically to these skills: in rhetoric and composition, or in area studies. One is not best served by the old humanities disciplines – philosophy, literature, history, religious studies – and their characteristic methods of inquiry. These fields teach a large amount of content knowledge that has no marketable applications. Nor should it – for that was never supposed to be the point.

I am well aware of the pressures facing university students today, especially in the United States. While I believe that the kind of knowledge taught in philosophy and religious studies is valuable in and of itself, I know that even intrinsic value has its limits. Even if the undergraduate humanities were usually taught brilliantly, in a way that inspired and changed lives the way they should, such a transformation would still not be worth the lifetime of indentured servitude that undergraduate debt often creates. Here’s the thing, though: neither is training in critical thinking or “intercultural competence”. Those don’t give you much of an advantage in a job market where even university humanities graduates can land in poorly paid no-future jobs. If one is going to go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt for a university education, it had really better be in engineering, medicine, or a similar field that will allow one a chance of freeing oneself from that burden. The humanities cannot compete in such an arena and I don’t see why they should try.

No, the humanities can best make their case to those who are not mortgaging their future for a degree. At a private university, that generally means the students who get scholarships or are wealthy. But notice in particular that Reineke is referring to public higher education. The arguments for the humanities can and should take on a very different cast in such a place than they do at an American private college. Public universities exist and should exist because they are a public good – the state subsidizes an activity which would be impossible without it. Among these activities are the transmission of great, valuable ideas from generation to generation, and the continual reinterpretation of those ideas for new and different times.Those are the reasons that the humanities came into being in the first place, and they continue to be the reasons the humanities are valuable now. In a public context, the academic humanities should make their case on those old-fashioned but perennial grounds.

I suspect this may also be the best way for academic humanists to make their case even within private universities – for what is forgotten there, amid the terribly unfortunate rhetoric of students as “customers”, is that even private universities are nonprofits. Except at for-profit universities like the University of Phoenix – where everybody gets an A because that’s what they paid for – universities have a mission that goes beyond fee-for-service. We can make a case that the transmission and reinterpretation of great ideas is part of that mission.

I am aware that even within the humanities, many – perhaps most – do not see their task as so old-fashioned. Call them postmodernists, critical theorists, or whatever one wishes, these more recent humanists view the task of the humanities as something different: a kind of critique that goes well beyond “critical thinking” in the usual sense, to a radical unmasking of society’s hidden presuppositions. Fine. There is much I would disagree with in this approach in general, but that disagreement is not relevant to the case I’m making here. For the economic case for these critical humanities is no better than that for the old-fashioned humanities. Learning to deconstruct the oppressive assumptions of the capitalist system is not going to prepare you well to make money within that system. Both views of the humanities see the correct point that the humanities need to justify themselves on grounds proper to their own inquiry, whether those grounds be the transmission of great ideas or the deconstruction of the status quo. And the humanities in the public academy must make their case to governments on one or both of these grounds, grounds that have nothing to do with economic value and marketability.

If they cannot – if the only case for their survival within academia must be economic – then the academic humanities are already dead. It’s just a question of how quickly we bury them.

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17 thoughts on “On the economic value of the humanities”

Amod:
There does seem to be an effort to take both sides of the road at the same time. One side is that although the university study of the liberal arts have no direct material benefit to the student still they are a substantive good. The other side is that critical thinking is a transferable (fungible?) good and allows for more effective ‘uptake’ of other more marketable skills. That seems to be the current orthodoxy however it does not on critical reflection suffice as a good reason to get into major debt. That last is a particularly American consideration, elsewhere higher education is subsidised. An American without considerable independent means or wealthy parents would probably be better off reading privately and going straight into the world of work and get on the job training or take up a technological course. For others a degree in the liberal arts is a pleasant way of deferring the harsh reality of turning a shilling. If you are going to be a Brahmin the only pukka Brahmin is a poor one. Remember: if you touch a plough you loose caste.

Yes, and I tried to take some note of the difference between public and private universities; even in the US, the debt burden undertaken at the former is usually lower, though sometimes still substantial. (The private university is a largely, though not exclusively, American phenomenon.) I don’t think students of moderate means should ever pay the cost of a private humanities degree out of their own pockets.

Hi Amod and thanks for the post. I usually apply your kind of argument whenever I am confronted with objections about the fact that Indology (or any other subject I might be dealing with) is not “scientific” enough and should not be state funded. I have seen plenty of colleagues trying to market their studies as if they were part of the “hard sciences”, i.e., with statistical data or models borrowed from biology or with a lot of terminological make up (in my home country many institutes of religious studies have changed their name into “religious sciences”).
Thus, I cannot but agree: if we say that we are almost as good as X, why should not one just go for X?

Nonetheless, in the case you examine, I think that it makes sense to rethink our teaching and research taking also in account their general value. This cannot be calculated as if it were part of the country’s gross income, but it can have an impact in the general degree of engagement in cultural activities, which might generally lead to better political strategies, improved general education, etc. In other words: do not you see as part of your duty to reach out to people who are desperate to find interesting material on, for instance, Buddhist ethics, and can only choose between too technical articles on their Pāli sources and low-level booklets where Buddhism is just a single thing?

Elisa, no disagreement here. I think there is much to be said for the value of the humanities in producing cultivated, thoughtful citizens. (And I have tried to reach out at least a bit by writing the blog in such a way that it is understandable, if difficult, for a general reader.) I think the field have tremendous value to society as a whole, and should be subsidized for that reason (any government that tried to withdraw funding for the academic humanities is a government I would wish to defeat). I just think that little if any of that value is monetary. And that’s not a bad thing.

Amod, I appreciate what you say — and I am sympathetic. But the discussion is worthwhile. I think the answer is neither with the idealistic view that the humanities should not sully itself with economic concerns nor with the view that the humanities has to justify itself as vocational training.

Can’t we join heaven and earth? The academy as vocational training is, of course, an impoverished view — a subsistence level approach to what it is to be human. On the other hand, the reality of paying rent and utilities and putting food on the table is a discipline. It might be possible to conceive of a philosophy of utopian bliss — but it wouldn’t be worth much without being grounded in the real world of birth, old age, sickness and death.

As I read in a funny article years ago — there are only two things in the world worthy of genuine worry. The first in money. The second is death. And if you think about it, the first is just an aspect of the second. Philosophy has to deal with these worries and it is a healthy discipline to not address these concerns only in the abstract.

Jim, after having spent so many years on the PhD job market, I am all too aware of the necessity of paying for rent and food! I definitely agree that humanities graduates have marketable skills and they should make good use of them, and that many humanities schools should pay greater attention to this. But this is something to do once students are in the programs. What I don’t think humanists should do is promote their fields – to students or administrators – as justifiable for their monetary value. They aren’t. The monetary value is – we may hope – a small but real and helpful side effect.

The important issues raised here cannot be addressed without directly confronting MVI or Money Value Imperialism, a money value code which is becoming the engine of global economies, societies, and governments. In its essence, the money value code affirms that:

X has value if and only if it serves or contributes to economic value.

And what is “economic value”? We don’t need an Einstein to figure that out. It is plain as pikestaff:

X has economic value if and only if it serves or contributes to private corporate monetary profit sequences or processes.

So, adding 2 + 2, we get:

X has value if and only if it serves or contributes to private corporate monetary profit sequences or processes.

It follows, from the standpoint of this money value imperialism, that education has value if and only if it serves or contributes to private corporate monetary profit sequences or processes.

Hence, we have the not-so-astonishing phenomenon of the gradual takeover and subordination of higher education by the corporate sector and interminable mantras and invocations on the importance of serving the “needs of business” or of “contributing to the economy” in the cloisters of academe.

The private corporate monetary profit sequences have become “abstract”, or rather “gone pathological”, and are divorced from, and are gradually turning hostile to, the real needs and requirements of human life and even the economy of entire nations.

There are trillions of dollars yielded by private corporate monetary profit sequences which have turned into “dead numbers” in bank accounts beyond the reach of taxation and any human application other than investment to serve again monetary profit sequences!

To insist on this pathological goal or end as the touchstone of all value is, well, the mother of all pathologies!

Aurobindo (1872 – 1950), the Indian mystic and thinker, presciently coined a word for all this in his work “The Human Cycle”:

There is another value at risk as well when the non-profit mission of universities is displaced by a profit motive. A great virtue of academia is that it is, essentially, a gift economy. Teachers contribute their scholarship to the broader academic community and their teaching abilities to undergraduates — all for relatively low compensation compared with salaries in private business. In exchange, academics receive status in the community and an ability to share in the free exchange of ideas.

When you introduce a profit motive as a primary consideration — everything changes in a subtle or not so subtle way. Academics become less willing to publish and more interested in keeping their insights as property that can be exploited for profit. As a result, innovators become proprietary and their colleagues have less access to ideas. Students become focused on what an education can do for them instead of what an education can do to them. And the academic community breaks down into a hierarchy based on economic profit and loss.

Liberals who don’t understand that academia is a gift economy complain that it is a reflection of misplaced values that teachers in our society make less than investment bankers. Conservatives who don’t understand this believe that competition and profit can make education more efficient. Both views improperly import profit into a gift economy that values and rewards communal effort and devotion to ideals of scholarship and the free exchange of ideas. And this change comes at great cost.

Is it impossible to defend the non-economic value of the humanities without making what I think is the bad and elitist move of telling people from working class backgrounds that such education isn’t for them? This is my life, but I’d still recommend my path to anyone with similar background and ability:

Re your path, am I correct inferring that you are currently enrolled in a doctoral programme in the humanities? If so, are you expecting to seek a faculty job? If the answer to both questions is yes, I would be interested to hear whether you would still recommend this path a few years after you graduate.

But on the question of élitism: I certainly think many people from poor or working-class backgrounds should get humanities educations – and that’s the main reason why the government should subsidize them. I’m all for people from poor or working-class backgrounds getting humanities educations when government can keep tuitions down to a modest level for them (or subsidize the tuitions with need-based grants rather than loans), as should certainly be the case. I’m also all for them getting such educations when the bulk of the cost is provided by scholarship, and I’m all for universities providing such scholarships generously.

But in the regrettable cases where neither university scholarships nor government aid are sufficient, should poor or working-class people take out giant piles of debt to get a humanities education? No. I don’t think that’s élitist, just pragmatic. “No matter how great it is, don’t buy something you can’t afford” is good advice for everyone, even when what they can afford is minimal.

My sole graduate experience was law school, which was quite expensive — but which resulted in employment at the end.

My son is in a Tufts University graduate program for chemistry and I was very pleased to see that, with work as a teaching assistant, his graduate program was fully subsidized, with a stipend. The amount he earns is not a great deal — but enough that he can afford to live with friends in an apartment near Davis Square in Somerville instaed of with his parents.

And, as far as I can tell, that is about as close to pure happiness as this ephemeral material world provides. Wasn’t there a philosopher who said that happiness has three requirements: to be healthy, to be wealthy, and to be young and among friends?

Does graduate school in the humanities typically result in a large additional debt burden (above what might be incurred as an undergraduate)? My younger brother who, relatively late in life, has decided to enroll in a graduate program in Old English at the University of Toronto seems to have a similar paid tuition, teaching assistant and stipend arrangement.

My second and third paragraphs above were referring to undergrad. It is common but not universal for doctoral programs in the humanities to have scholarships that cover tuition and then allow one to teach to make a modest living. Mine did. There are some doctoral programs in the humanities that do not fund their students this way; I would never recommend those, under any circumstances, except to those who are independently wealthy and can pay their entire way out of pocket without taking loans. (That’s a very tiny sliver of the population; it certainly wasn’t me.)

Most of the debt was incurred in the nonwestern Philosophy of Religions track at the University of Chicago Divinity School at the turn of the century, which seems to have been the worst time to have been a student there. As policy, they did not award master’s students merit aid of more than half tuition (which I received) and there were no teaching opportunities of any kind. They were advertising the Chicago master’s as more-or-less necessary to ultimately gaining admission to the Chicago Ph.D. through in-house petition. There was a published rule in the Divinity School handbook that if you were caught with a job, the dean would require you to quit the job or leave the program because it compromised your commitment to your education. So despite the fact that my advisor in that program told me I was one of his best students ever, I could not get more aid, and when he left at the end of my first year I could not even finish the program because there was no one to teach the courses I needed to take until they hired Dan Arnold many years later. All the PR students in my cohort emigrated to other programs, where they usually did not receive advanced standing for their previous studies – most of us have just finished up are or near finishing our degrees. Since that time they have significantly cut tuition for the master’s students and are giving all admitted Ph.D. students full tuition and a $20K stipend for five years with no work commitments. I could weep.

I haven’t finished my dissertation as I need to complete some fieldwork this summer before I can start writing, but I am a full time adjunct at one of the state universities in Iowa now, and the job may very well lead to a visiting assistant professor position in that program and a little bit better pay upon the completion of the degree. (That has been the usual track for adjuncts from the UI upon completing their degrees – adjunct position followed by VAP until a tenure-track job is lined up somewhere else. The placement record has been stellar, with only two or so of 30 students within twenty years still stuck in an instructor or community college position 5 years out). One could do worse. I’m on income-based repayment for student loans, so even if I were not deferred I would pay nothing until my income reached 150% of the poverty line. That’s unlikely to happen until my first tenure-track position. In the meantime I’m making 33% more money than the next highest paying job in my employment history, which wasn’t university-related. IBR requires 20 or 25 years of on-time payments of 15% of income after 150% of the poverty line, after which any remaining principle is forgiven. So while I was insane with worry when that article was published, perhaps I could have worried less. If I were in the same situation and had the same rather limited options, I would do it all again – except that I would have chosen a program other than Chicago had I had known about the fickleness of my advisor.

It’s still more money per annum than anybody in my immediate family has made since the 1980s (Grandma was retired and Mom on welfare) and I do have this rather impertinent expectation to make at least as much money as I am making now for the rest of my career – so probably I too am impure in my motivations.

P.J.:
Somebody was telling me recently that he knows 3 Phd.s in Philosophy who are unemployed. Not unemployed in the Academy but unemployed full stop.

By the way it isn’t just a question of money that keeps working class people out of the academy; even where education is heavily subsidised they do not go to college in the numbers proportionate to the general population. It’s a matter of culture, early independence, not seeing the value in deferred gratification etc. You know all this. I went along the road of graduate study myself for a while, my native informant above was a student in my tutorial. He went on to become a barrister at law and made pots of money, I deviated into the world of artisanrey working independently. Naturally I don’t mention my academic background; people like renaissance man in the renaissance. I know another man not far from me here in Ireland who has a post grad degree in Philosophy and works as a basket maker. Like myself he lives in his own house in the heart of the country in a beautiful setting. Being an ambulant mortgage is no life.

I’d say that you ought to be thinking of developing a marketable skill. This is not a counsel of despair. You’ll meet a better class of person. An independent scholar is much more possible in the internet age.

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